Understanding a question from an essay written during the Revolutionary War?I had to read a excerpt from an essay written during the Revolutionary...

This is one where you really ought to ask your teacher
because he/she is the one who has actually made up the question and knows exactly what
is wanted.

It sounds to me like you are being asked to look
at the essay and find evidence of two rather different influences on American thought --
Puritanism and the Enlightenment.

I think your teacher is
asking you first to look for evidence that shows Puritan ideas have affected this
essay.  You might want to look for things like an emphasis on following what God wants. 
The Puritans believed (among other things) that nations should act in ways that God
wanted.  Does the writer ever say anything like that -- like that God wants Americans to
be free?

Second, you are supposed to look for evidence of
the Enlightenment.  I think the most likely thing to look for here is stuff about
monarchy being bad.  A major Enlightenment idea was that people were all pretty much
equal and so there was no reason for one person to rule others just because of who his
ancestors were.  Is there anything like that in the essay?